The problem of the New Public Management university: An authentic story and a systematic analysis

About

Jante University. Episodes from Life behind the Wall is a trilogy by the German professor Dr. Linda Maria Koldau offering authentic insight into a Danish New Public Management university.

A headhunted international professor spends three years at a Danish university in Jutland and experiences scandalously low standards, stifling and chaotic administration, and a management using totalitarian methods. Acting according to international norms in academic life, she takes up the fight against the scandalous standards and problematic management – but then has to find out that at a New Public Management university a professor has no rights and no legal security.

Koldau’s trilogy combines a documentary story about low standards and bullying at a Danish university with an experienced professor’s systematic analysis of the problems in the New Public Management university system, which have long-term consequences for society and a state’s economy.

Click on The trilogy and Concept to get information about the three volumes. Click on Downloads to get free excerpts from Linda Maria Koldau’s trilogy (in Danish) Click on Consulting to read about Prof. Koldau’s offers for consulting and coaching in organization, management, and educational strategy. Click on Author to learn more about the Linda Maria Koldau, her CV and her initiatives in top quality education and organization.
Click on Press to find press material and quotations from the trilogy.

What does “Jante” mean?The university’s name “Jante” refers both to the Jante Law and to the fictitious little town in Danish Jutland as described by the author Aksel Sandemose. Cf. the definition of the Law of Jante on the English Wikipedia site:

“The Law of Jante (Danish: Janteloven; Norwegian: Jantelova or Janteloven; Swedish: Jantelagen) is the idea that there is a pattern of group behaviour towards individuals within Scandinavian communities that negatively portrays and criticises individual success and achievement as unworthy and inappropriate. The Jante Law as a concept was created by the Dano-Norwegian author Aksel Sandemose, who in his novel A fugitive crosses his tracks (En flyktning krysser sitt spor, 1933, English translation published in the USA in 1936) identified the Law of Jante as ten rules. Sandemose’s novel portrays the small Danish town Jante (modelled upon his native town Nykøbing Mors as it was at the beginning of the 20th century, but typical of all small towns and communities), where nobody is anonymous. Generally used colloquially as a sociological term to negatively describe an attitude towards individuality and success common in Sweden and the rest of the Nordic countries the term refers to a mentality that de-emphasizes individual effort and places all emphasis on the collective, while discouraging those who stand out as achievers.”

In the trilogy Jante Universitet, the basic problem of the Jantelov mentality at a Danish university that allegedly strives at achieving international standard is described in various chapters, including an astute analysis by Juliane Steffen, M.A., in vol. 2, Uddannelseskatastrofen (episode “Hjem til Jante”).

To contact the author, click on Contact or send a direct mail to Linda.Koldau@gmx.de.

– the disastrous education policy
– the scandalously low standards at a Danish institute in the humanities
– the absurd educational strategies of heads of department and heads of studies, who dictate the contents of courses without knowing anything about the discipline and most basic pedagogic principles
– management methods that resemble those known from the Soviet Union
– the chaotic administration at a university, which blocks and destroys all attempts at good and effective academic work
– the lack of commitment on part of many students, who get five years gratis education and even are paid for this by the Danish state
– the despair of the few talented students, who are being bullied by the academic staff just because they desire a good education and a chance to develop their gifts
– a mistaken understanding of the sciences and scholarship with focus on theories and set forms rather than on knowledge and effective working methods – turning the Danish humanities into isolated institutes that have nothing with general society to do

All these issues are presented in authentic episodes that can be read within 15 minutes each. A few chapters offer systematic analyses of the complex educational problem in Denmark.